Welcome Back to Gotham City

Saturday, February 28, 2009

Looks Like This Really is the End of the Road

I know I've said it all before but I always came back because I always had a place to live, internet access. Come next month some time, that'll all be a thing of the past.

She dropped the hammer on me today. When I get my whopping $424 refund the middle of next month, I'll have a couple of weeks after that to get out. After that, she'll call the cops. Yes, she actually said that.

In between looking at my Youtube videos of my soon-to-be ex grandson Gavin, I've been scouring the Internet looking for rooms in my town to rent and am getting nowhere. I have to stay in town close to my job since I have no car. I have to get a room because I cannot afford an apartment. I will come full circle and perhaps may even wind up in the same room in which I lived as a kid 29 years ago.

But the worst part will be losing my grandson. Once I leave here, I'll never again hear his adorable voice and his semi-English, feeling him squirming in my lap while I play Elmo videos for him on Youtube, feel him slipping my pens out of the pockets of my work shirt, feeling him touch my ears and eyes and naming them. To him, one day I'll be there and the next I won't be. He'll move on and will soon forget about me. He never learned my name and no one ever taught him how to call me "grandpa."

Another thing I'll lose: Not having anything to do for anyone when I get whereever will be home after work. No dishes to wash, no driveway to shovel, no yard to mow, no repairs to do, no food to cook to feed my loved ones, no one to shop for. Like any nursing home resident, I'll soon be completely redundant, with no one depending me for anything, expecting anything out of me. When you reach that state, you're through forever.

I've devoted the last 15+ years of my life to a house that was never mine and to a family that also was never mine and this is my reward.

Not one person in this so-called family of mine stuck up for me whether or not it was their place to say. It's as if the last 15+ years never happened except I'm 15+ years older. The Navy in my DD 214 took a year out of my life on account of what I did and now I'm about to lose that 15 year-long investment.

No matter how many times I think about it, I cannot wrap my mind around this, I cannot believe this is happening to me. True, I wasn't the greatest husband or father but I was always there, making a beeline home from work. I never abused anyone in my family, never drank to excess, never took drugs, never gambled, never cheated, working the same jobs for years on end and doing everything in my power to pay the bills. I think of the things I should've and shouldn't have done but even when I add them up, it still doesn't justify this happening to me.

Then I add up what positive differences I made and still make. But apparently, in this cruel, shitty world, that's not enough.

I'd staked my whole identity on being a family man. Everything else came second. It was all I ever wanted, even as a child. And with two rejections from literary agencies in the last two days, I haven't a claim to stake even as a writer any more than I will as a family man.

In all honesty and sincerity, I just do not see how I will be able to survive out there. I'm being given weeks to reassemble a life that took 15+ years to build and was senselessly destroyed.

So when I drop out of sight for good, you'll know. I'll give you that much warning. But I cannot guarantee that I'll resurface anywhere else because I'm about to lose my very last reasons for living.

Obama Ain't No Robin Hood

If you were to Google "Obama, Robin Hood", you'd be presented with a plethora of badly Photoshopped pictures depicting our 44th president, a centrist Democrat, as the English folk hero who was renowned for stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.

What has earned President Obama this allegedly pernicious sobriquet is his proposal to modestly raise the taxes of individuals making more than $200,000 and couples making more than $250,000 to partly subsidize health care for those 48,000,000 poorer folks who haven't access to affordable health care.

Jamison Foser at Media Matters made a post yesterday about how the MSM are amplifying wingnuts who are hoarsely screaming, once again, about class warfare. Of course, the reason why they're doing this is that they're afraid that they, among the wealthier and more powerful of our national population, are being attacked by wild-eyed, bomb-throwing anarchic socialists like Barack Obama.Take Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, who even went so far as to go on MSNBC, supposedly the most liberal network, to complain that we're running out of rich people. This, after eight years of ruinous tax cuts that have clearly benefited the wealthy and even before Obama's tax plan has been implemented (which ought to take effect, fittingly, on April Fool's Day).

The MSM are treating this as if both Obama's two year-old promise to do just this, as well as the battle over health care, is some surprising development. They are not. In fact, the desire for universal health care is something that goes back to 1945, 64 years ago, and the fact that, after 32 successive Congresses, we still have not ratified a universal health care plan after more than two generations reveals something much worse than mere gridlock. We are entrenched in a class warfare controlled by corporate self-interests in which the poor, not the rich, are the ones getting assaulted.

This bombing campaign was stepped up when the HMO's were deregulated, paving the way for outrageous health care costs. America spends approximately $2.5 trillion a year on health care alone and there's no sign that trend will slow down. The President's ambitious but still-incremental proposal to spend $634 billion to overhaul the health care system will only provide it for roughly half of those 48,000,000. The SCHIP extension, while a step in the right direction, gave four million additional children health care yet there are still at least 5.5 million more children who as yet do not have it.

Nowhere and at no time during the campaign did Mr. Obama ever completely leave out the private HMO's that are plainly the root cause for the dismal failure that is our health care system. Michael Moore's Sicko proved that even those with an HMO often feel as if they have no health care when one factors in the endless deductibles, copays for office visits, procedures and prescriptions and ill-trained case workers second-guessing primary care physicians. As anyone who has studied the current health care system can tell you, HMO's make their money by denying you health care.

Dr. Howard Dean, among others, had said that the key to our economic recovery is in revamping our dysfunctional, self-dealing health care system. With the subprime crisis and the collateral damage caused by it still far from resolved, I'm not entirely sure if Dr. Dean is correct. But attacking this problem in a pragmatic fashion is certainly what our nation needs if we're going to resume our place at the vanguard of the international community. It's worse than laughable that such a wealthy, highly industrialized nation such as the United States would also have nearly 50,000,000 citizens priced out of everything but free clinics and many millions more with overpriced, inadequate health care plans.

The otherwise energetic Obama administration has yet to make a nominee for HHS Secretary and until it does that, it will be seriously lacking the political capital to be making proposals for health care reform. Obama's mantra of talking to these HMO's carried by businesses and getting them to accept lower profits is the height of naivete.

Obama ain't no Robin Hood. But throw in a modest tax increase and Grover Norquist and company are ready to grab the government by its figurative hair to drown it in a bathtub.

There's something to be said for incremental change. I credit the president with being smart enough to realize that violent, wrenching change could bring to a screeching, smoking halt a massive system that is already dysfunctional. But the system is rotten from top to bottom, from the inside out. And, in the end, the ultimate success of the president's initiatives will depend entirely on what the 111th Congress we've just elected and what the future 112th Congress allows him to do.

And when the health care system is this greedy, unconscionable and devoid of commitment to those whom they nickel and dime to death, then perhaps more radical measures ought to be proposed, such as raising the taxes on the wealthiest even more than the modest ones proposed by President Obama. Perhaps we ought to start taking steps to making managed health care a thing of the past. If that brings us closer to socialism, so be it. And would that be a bad thing? One need only look at several Latin American economies, at the health care systems in place in Canada and France to see that a more socialized economy is obviously what's needed when private, deregulated industry, as always, drops the ball.

And to the liberal soul there's something enduringly romantic about Socialism or even the merest whiff of it. We're not seeing anything close to that with this administration. But tell that to the likes of Michele Bachmann and Republicans who retch at the thought of even the most modest shared sacrifice.

Friday, February 27, 2009

And Why Are We Still Listening to This Other Asshat?

"Sarah Palin's absolutely the real deal. ... I don't want to say I felt a presence but she definitely had energy and she definitely went to work for American people, and it disgusts me on how often they try to bash her just for her sincerity." - Joe the Dumber

No doubt all of you have already been to the emergency room of your local hospitals having your sides stitched up during the annual CPAC confab. I really look forward to this every bit as much as any drooling 27%er because the attendees, and their statements, get more and more bizarre with each year. It's not surprising that, with a smaller-sized minority in Congress and a black Democrat in the White House, we're hearing ante-bellum rage spill over into the cushy lobbies and vestibules of the CPAC conference.

Look at the analog box bozo in this Youtube video. Why are even Republicans, let alone those of us who wouldn't flatline on an EEG, listening to a guy who, at his last book signing the night before last, sold a whopping five copies of his book, Lib'rals Are Fat, Stupid Dumbheads (Note to any potential agents still reading my proposal: If this man gets a contract allowing him to needlessly kill trees and subtract from the national intelligence quotient and I don't get a contract, I will personally bitchslap every one of you)?

Because that's what Joe would like to do to certain members of Congress. Bitchslap and even shoot them. Another mini Hal Turner heard from the peanut gallery.

You want to know how much Joe the Dumber has dumbed down the national intelligence quotient? This Pajamas Media hero last month said that the media shouldn't report the news and ought to be kept away from war.

Then at CPAC last night, Joe said that anyone who doesn't support the troops (Read: Fat, Stupid Dumbhead Libr'als) ought to be slapped. So, in Joe's sunbaked mind, lying the troops into a war unimaginably costly in both financial and human terms and allowing them to continue risking their lives for said long-discredited pack of lies while being ignored by the media is... supporting the troops. And he's the no-haired golden child of CPAC.

Okaaaaay.....

Joe the Plumber, here's the liberal response: You are a complete fraud through and through. Your name is not Joe and you're not even a licensed plumber, thereby making even the definite article "the" yet another misnomer. You are a tax fraud who, through some sinister machinations of the publishing business, was Velcroed to an agent then had a ghostwritten book rushed into print within mere months of the election while writers of actual talent toil for years in obscurity getting passed over through form rejection letters in favor of fucks like you.

Until you came along, Joe, it was impossible for me to imagine someone who's actually stupider than the William Hung of politicians, George W. Bush. Yet somehow, against all odds, you have taken an organ donor and made him look like William F. Buckley by conspicuous relief.

Speaking of your hero George W. Bush, how can anyone claim with a straight face that he, of all people, supported the troops? Walter Reed Army Hospital, under his outsourced stewardship, was turned into a Middle Ages abattoir of human misery. Even as he was sending the first wave of poor, deluded saps into Iraq, he proposed cutting their pay and his Pentagon sent them in harm's way and commanding them to wear inferior armor at the risk of losing their SGLI death benefits.

They were lied into an illegal war on the basis of WMD's and by the following year the man who sent them there had a comical slide show made of him looking under the Oval Office's furniture for those very same WMD's. Bill collectors are chasing them long after their discharge for leaving pieces of equipment and parts of their uniforms on the battlefield. We're sending their remains home as freight to save costs and have not, until President Obama lifted the ban, been allowed to have their flag-draped caskets to be photographed or for the families to be comforted by then-Senator, now Vice President Biden at Dover AFB.

Donald Rumsfeld couldn't even be bothered to personally sign the many, many letters of condolence that were sent out to thousands of grieving parents. They were rubber-stamped.

How does that in any, shape or form support the troops, Joe?

Addled Republican brains can only think in absolutes, in huge monolithic blocks. If you're critical of Israel, you're not merely an anti-Zionist, you're also an anti-Semite. By the same token, if you don't support the Iraq war, you're also not supporting the troops.

The very act of elevating you to national prominence by talking to you at a rope line alone may prove to be the biggest reason why Obama may not get re-elected in 2012.

You're still in your thirties, right, Joe? In that case, here's an idea in how you can support the troops: Become one of them. C'mon, go for it, Curly, before Obama pulls 'em out at the end of August 2010. Hell, you can make a real significant contribution to the war effort while actually supporting our troops by having you take point in patrols. We can even put you in a converted plumbing van heavily fortified with plywood and sand bags just like the unarmored Humvees that our boys and girls are still using. That ought to protect you against the inevitable IED's that kill our kids there more than anything else.

Or you can go to Afghanistan as a fucking diplomat, where your golden oratorical skills and silver tongue can work wonders with the Taliban that your pal Georgie just couldn't quite wipe off the face of the earth any more than he could wipe off the face of the earth the opium crops that finance their operations.

Then, assuming you'll survive either adventure, you can stand next to President Obama at his first State of the Union Address next year as a real national hero and we can laugh ourselves sick as he squeakily rubs your bald, fat head for good luck. Then you can bitchslap him and get shot in a hail of bullets by the Secret Service.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Why Are We Still Listening to This Asshat?

I've long since resigned myself to the realization that the "liberal" media will never give Obama a break. It was obvious that they'd held him to a higher standard long before they held their collective breath waiting for him to make a George W. Bush-league misstep during his trip to Germany last year. Now, as then, we're still seeing more Republican talking assholes with ties than progressives. Hell, Think Progress reported yesterday that Fox's viewership actually spiked by 24% since the inauguration.

All the same, I haven't a problem with listening to the very occasional conservative who actually knows what the hell s/he's talking about. What I do have a problem with is networks putting Tom DeLay's, Joe the Plumber's or Sarah Palin's pusses on the air or the WSJ giving Karl Rove a reliable organ where he can short stroke to his heart's content.

Under Rove's stewardship, the GOP got trounced in the '06 midterms and, in his baleful wake, got stampeded even worse last year. The Democrats now control two of the three branches of government and just publicly admitting to being a Republican is tantamount to begging for a tarring and feathering.

So why do we have to endure the likes of Rove when the man is obviously a Koolaid swiller of the first magnitude? Because many of the idiots who have flocked to Fox since the inauguration also hang on Rove's every unctious word. His latest deathless Ode to Bush, "Obama's Straw Men", is just such a masterpiece of obfuscation. Because, according to Herr Rove, nobody is really disagreeing with Barack Obama about anything.

President Barack Obama reveres Abraham Lincoln. But among the glaring differences between the two men is that Lincoln offered careful, rigorous, sustained arguments to advance his aims and, when disagreeing with political opponents, rarely relied on the lazy rhetorical device of "straw men." Mr. Obama, on the other hand, routinely ascribes to others views they don't espouse and says opposition to his policies is grounded in views no one really advocates.

Oh, you mean like Bush's "Some would say..." "There are some who think..." speeches? Bush never did get around to introducing those straw men of his own to us.

On Tuesday night, Mr. Obama told Congress and the nation, "I reject the view that . . . says government has no role in laying the foundation for our common prosperity." Who exactly has that view? Certainly not congressional Republicans, who believe that through reasonable tax cuts, fiscal restraint, and prudent monetary policies government contributes to prosperity.

Who'd said that "government has no role in laying the foundation for our common prosperity"? I'll give you a hint: His initials were Ronald Reagan and that ridiculous mantra has been repeated by every Beltway Republican ever since.

No tax cut, as Barney Frank recently reminded us, has ever rebuilt a road or a bridge and never better educated a child. Fiscal restraint? Perhaps, in gutting Bush's NCLB, the Real ID Act and a whole host of other hare-brained Republican schemes that look great on paper provided it's not paper money. Because Big Gubmint ain't the answer, doncha know? But their utterly ridiculous posture of "fiscal restraint" kinda gets blown out of the water when one realizes what the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing us each year. Onward, Christian soldiers:

Mr. Obama also said that America's economic difficulties resulted when "regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market." Who gutted which regulations?

Perhaps it was President Bill Clinton who, along with then Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, removed restrictions on banks owning insurance companies in 1999.

Oh, here we go with the "Blame Slick Willie" refrain.

OK, Clinton did sign off on two especially egregious pieces of legislation, one of which was the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. What this did, basically, was remove any restrictions that had previously been in place barring banks from owning insurance companies and allowing mergers so massive that it's a miracle the Federal Trade Commission didn't step in while howling about violation of antitrust laws.

And Rove would have you think that Republicans were howling about this federal deregulation and dug in their heels every step of the way, right?

Uh, not exactly. What Rove conveniently forgets is that Phil "Whiners" Gramm had his fingerprints all over that other aforementioned egregious piece of legislation, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, aka the Financial Services Modernization Act. And in the decade since that law was passed, I'm sure that Republicans, led by Dear Leader Bush, have been fighting tooth and nail to get government more involved in reversing this deregulation orgy that's bringing our economy down around our ears, right? (This is the part where you start to hear crickets.)

Perhaps Mr. Obama was talking about George W. Bush. But Mr. Bush spent five years pushing to further regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He was blocked by Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd and Rep. Barney Frank. Arriving in the Senate in 2005, Mr. Obama backed up Mr. Dodd's threat to filibuster Mr. Bush's needed reforms.

While it's true that Bush called for more regulation of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, no one at the time, certainly not the Democrats who opposed it and had it tabled, knew how bad the problem truly was on account of the burning fuse being buried so deeply in the books. At the risk of oversimplfying this, Democrats opposed tighter regulations at that time solely on the grounds that it could hurt lower income people get financing for housing.

Rove's insistence on labeling his old boss some champion of regulation is beneath laughter but if I try real had, I think I'll still be able to eke out a few "nyuk nyuk nyuks."

Even in an ostensibly nonpartisan speech marking Lincoln's 200th birthday, Mr. Obama used a straw-man argument, decrying "a philosophy that says every problem can be solved if only government would step out of the way; that if government were just dismantled, divvied up into tax breaks, and handed out to the wealthiest among us, it would somehow benefit us all. Such knee-jerk disdain for government -- this constant rejection of any common endeavor -- cannot rebuild our levees or our roads or our bridges."

Whose philosophy is this?

Grover Norquist, who wants to shrink government so that you can drag it into a bathroom and drown it in a bathtub? And, once again, St. Ronnie of the Jelly Bean and every Beltway Republican ever since, yada yada.

Many Americans justifiably believe that government is too big and often acts in counterproductive ways. But that's a far cry from believing that in "every" case government is the problem or that government should be "dismantled" root and branch. Who -- other than an anarchist -- "constantly rejects any common endeavor" like building levees, roads or bridges?

This, coming from the former Katrina Czar. Oh, the irony is delicious.

How about the Republicans who fought the "spending bill" with hammers and tongs, claiming that educating children, aiding battered women and so forth was pork barrel spending? How about Republicans who kept insisting on bridges to nowhere and electrified fences along our southern border while resisting calls to repair the levees of New Orleans?

During his news conference on Feb. 9, Mr. Obama decried an unnamed faction in the congressional stimulus debate as "a set of folks who -- I don't doubt their sincerity -- who just believe that we should do nothing."

Who were these sincere do-nothings? Every House Republican voted for an alternative stimulus plan, evidence that they wanted to do something. Every Senate Republican -- with the exception of Judd Gregg, who'd just withdrawn his nomination to be Mr. Obama's Commerce secretary and therefore voted "present" -- voted for alternative stimulus proposals.

If Republicans had their way, the entire stimulus bill would've consisted of $900,000,000,000 of tax cuts and additional Pentagon spending. Which they got, with slight moderation. Other than that, Republicans were in favor of doing nothing, calling the Senate and House versions "spending bills", as if government spending money to stimulate an economy that flatlined under Bush's sleepy eye is some kind of a crime.

Then there's Mr. Obama's description of the Bush-era tax cuts. "A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy," he explained in his Tuesday speech, after earlier saying, "tax cuts alone can't solve all of our economic problems -- especially tax cuts that are targeted to the wealthiest few."

The Bush tax cuts were not targeted to "the wealthiest few."

OK, at this point, Rove is plainly going for cheap laughs. Because a little over two years ago, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said otherwise: "Families earning more than $1 million a year saw their federal tax rates drop more sharply than any group in the country as a result of President Bush’s tax cuts... Though tax cuts for the rich were bigger than those for other groups, the wealthiest families paid a bigger share of total taxes. That is because their incomes have climbed far more rapidly, and the gap between rich and poor has widened in the last several years."

So there, blubber lips. Oh, you want some more of this?

Everyone who paid federal income taxes received a tax cut, with the largest percentage of reductions going to those at the bottom. Last year, a family of four making $40,000 saved an average of $2,053 because of the Bush tax cuts. The tax code became more progressive as the share paid by the top 10% increased to 46.4% from 46% -- and the nation experienced 52 straight months of job growth after the cuts took effect. And since when is giving back some of what people pay in taxes "transferring wealth?"

And middle income families (or those who don't make that whopping $40,000 referenced by Rove) saved, on average, $58,000, which is a little more substantial than $2,053, which would stave off foreclosure for low income families for maybe a month, two tops.

Leave it to a Republican to piss down your back and tell you it's a golden shower. Of course, conveniently forgotten by Turd Blossom is the screamingly obvious fact that lower taxes for the wealthy results in much lower revenue for the government which, to quote St. Ronnie again, is the problem and not the answer.

In his inaugural address -- which was generally graceful toward the opposition -- Mr. Obama proclaimed, "We have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord." Which Republican ran against him on fear, conflict and discord?

Lesse, the old guy who looked like Grandpa in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre? What was his name? I've forgotten it already. How about Sarah "He Pals Around With Terrorists!" Palin?

It's hardly worth tearing this screed apart but since it's written by Rove, a guy who would've inspired Orwell to write the sequel to 1984, I'm always glad to savage him just to keep my hand in.

But don't go away angry, Karl. Just... just get the fuck out of our lives. Because, as we found out after the 2006 midterms, math's really not your long suit, after all. (Btw, if you want to give Rove your two cents worth, his email's Karl@Rove.com.)

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

The Civil War II

I'll buy into this much: Obama's obsession with Abraham Lincoln is being taken to extremes. OK, the Lincoln bible at the inauguration was a bit hokey but a nice touch. But it's getting almost as creepy as that roommate who was so obsessed with Jane Fonda's character that she even dyed her hair red and bought the same clothes she wore. And when Obama went to Ford's theater earlier this month to announce funding for renovations, that was more than courting disaster. He might as well have gone to the reddest district in Tennessee and hired an actor to play John Wilkes Booth.

But the following screed crossposted by Pat Dollard at Freeper Land dug up by Pamela Troy at the Smirking Chimp employs absurd reductionist thinking at its finest. It begins with a bewildering piece of (unlinked) news that seems to suggest that several states, starting with New Hampshire, are going to secede from the Union, leaving "the country split 71-29."

OK, whatever, Pat.

Pat then goes on to brilliantly connect the dots by saying,

Recall, if you will, Obama’s obsession to be the 21st Century Abraham Lincoln, and his ominous calls to recreate and rebuild America. Who was Lincoln? Why, he was the man who “preserved” the Union by way of implementing military force against states that had seceded.

So, since 1) the Hawaiian-born Obama who represented the same state as the Kentucky-born Abe Lincoln is 2) bringing about the same exact Socialist state that Lincoln, er, brought into being before, uh, Socialism was institutionalized then, uh, 3) we're ripe for another Civil War. Despite there being no slavery to fight over.

Yeah, right again, Patsy.

Dullard's brilliant paralleling of 1861 and 2009 America is ridiculous enough on the face of it but at least we can afford to laugh it away for the Newt Gingrich alternate history bilge that it is. What's alarming is the comments that it generated in Freeper Land. These people are convinced that Abe-ama Lincoln will take away their dadgum sovereignty and them darkies that's so vital to the south's still-thriving textile industry. Some samples:

I grew up in TX, but live in CA now. I have been waiting for something like this for a long time.

The Federal Govt must be defeated and restored to the form our founders intended.

I’m sure the Obama police are on their way to my house right now.If we the people must defend our country against this disaster in the making when no politician will help then I cannot stand by and watch it all go to hell! Either we fight with all we have or soon all will have nothing. Economic chaos is Hussein’s first goal and the sooner is comes the faster he intends to move to the next step to consolidate his power base. going to be hard for zero to manage new england and the west coast with us sitting in the middle. All Obama has to do is create a crisis by passing a very high firearms license/tax. Enough to start a few high profile Lexington Green's part two: Say in Waco or Ruby Ridge or Eldorado or the like.

As soon as people start firing on National Guard or such, well, the Army is going to do their duty to restore order under the constitutional authority of the POTUS whether they agree with him or not.

It's not as simple as just saying the Army are moral, ethical, professionals.

Those positive qualities could perhaps be used jujitsu style.

Had enough?

So, in summation, it's far likelier that our first socialist president, who's black and doesn't have to tackle slavery these days, will bring about a second civil war than it was for the grandson of a Nazi financier and traitor to bring about a fascist dictatorship to which we'd already played witness these past eight years.

As Pam Troy says, this is the increasingly visible Pinochet rationale, in which the rounding up, detention, torture and even outright execution of dissidents is always the preferred answer to rational debate and honest, committed bipartisanship. If they admit to voting for Obama or any Democrat, kill them on sight. If they're an avowed liberal, kill them on sight. The answer is extermination on a grander scale ever imagined even under the most prolific days of Pinochet's Operation Condor, starting with the murder of yet another democratically-elected leader.

Because that's what the Founding Fathers would have wanted, for us to extra-Constitutionally claim for ourselves the right to murder them the minute they start to smell like Karl Marx.

Obama's trying to keep everyone from getting their homes foreclosed on, while Bush did absolutely nothing to stop it. Obama's trying to re-establish rule of law for all of us while Bush, Cheney and Rove continue thumbing their noses at it. Obama's trying to get corporations to stop from rear-ending all of us while living the high life while Bush's SEC and Commerce Dept. did absolutely nothing to stop that from happening and even fostered such behavior.

The answer? Bring the Obama/Lincoln parallel to its logical conclusion.

Maybe some of you think you can afford to laugh this off as comic relief and make jokes such as, "We will fight them from the basements, we will fight them from the cushy hotel lobbies of CPAC conventions and we will fight them in cyberspace!"

But I, like Pam Troy, have noticed a hysterical screeching from the seedy side of the tracks ever since Election Night, coming from those lunatics who jack off to Rush's radio program in their plumbing vans and shortstroke to every word that dribbles like dysentery onto Hal Turner's blog.

They have no respect for the rule of law any more than Bush, Cheney or Rove does. They have no respect for democracy or the electoral process. If a centrist Democrat gets elected, it's an act of treason by most of the nation. What's called for is the rounding up and execution of the nearly 72,000,000 Americans who voted for Obama.

Get your shovels ready, boys, 'cuz you're looking at a lot of digging. It's either that or fire up the ovens and keep the smokestacks busy 24/7.

One thing the GOP has over the Dems is an ability to organize, present a united front and stay on message. Granted, the Cheetos demographic that makes up the, ahem, conservative blogosphere is considerably slower on the uptake than their tonier counterparts beside the Potomac but who's to say that one impeccably-timed event wouldn't organize them?

I don't see a Civil War II looming on the horizon, yet, but we could be looking at a series of Ruby Ridges and Wacos that, if bungled as badly by the FBI as the two aforementioned events, could actually bring about a national uprising with the likes of Rush and Turner waddling at the vanguard (which, for their ilk, would be moved to the back of the formation).

Because, while I don't necessarily envision another war between the states, we could be seeing an escalation of violence against peaceful, secular liberals for which Adkisson's double murder in Tennessee may be mere prologue.

Shared Sacrifice

You thought AIG had balls? Check out what Chicago's Northern Trust was caught doing last weekend and how much it cost to put up their employees and buddies for the Northern Trust golf open.

I'll give you the abstracts: This Chicago-based bank, which got $1.6 billion in bailout bucks, spent $50,000 to rent The House of Blues all to themselves. The band Chicago got paid $100,000. Sheryl Crow and Earth, Wind and Fire won't confirm how much they got paid but you know they don't offer a corporate discount.

Ladies were given trinkets from Tiffany and gift bags were called "stimulus packages." Guests and executives were put up at places like the Beverly Wilshire and Ritz Carlton.

Wait, it gets better: The $1.6 billion in taxpayers dollars we forked over to them? Northern Trust didn't even ask for it. That's right. We basically forced them to take over a billion and a half in taxpayer dollars and the poor, brow-beaten bastards had to accept it.

It gets even better: These bloated pricks actually laid off 450 people last December, or 4% of its workforce.

Nor does the irony ever end: For those not into the $6.3 million golf tournament, they were shuttled in Mercedes limos and could attend a Northern Trust-sponsored seminar on... wait for it.... "The Credit Crunch."

Of course, like AIG, they're claiming no bailout bucks were spent in the course of their Aga Khan weekend but like TMZ says, what the hell's the difference? Money is money and these assholes are pretending like the sky isn't falling down, after all, and that they can continue living their lavish Gatsby lifestyle and will lay off hundreds of employees just before Christmas at the same time they gratefully accept over a billion and a half in taxpayer money for which they never even asked.

Do They Actually Think Before Writing Headlines?

(This has got to be one of the singularly most disgusting stories I have ever read in my life. Good on Amy for bringing this to light.)

As many as 5,000 children in Pennsylvania have been found guilty, and up to 2,000 of them jailed, by two corrupt judges who received kickbacks from the builders and owners of private prison facilities that benefited. The two judges pleaded guilty in a stunning case of greed and corruption that is still unfolding. Judges Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan received $2.6 million in kickbacks while imprisoning children who often had no access to a lawyer. The case offers an extraordinary glimpse into the shameful private prison industry that is flourishing in the United States.

Take the story of Jamie Quinn. When she was 14 years old, she was imprisoned for almost a year. Jamie, now 18, described the incident that led to her incarceration...

Click on the title to read the rest of the story. What assholes will do for money never ceases to shock, anger and amaze me. What Goodman didn't mention is that both Ciavarella and Conahan are deeply suspected to be tied to a Pennsylvania mob boss named William D’Elia. So not only are they greedy and corrupt, sending little girls to prison for making web sites parodying their vice principals and getting involved in unwitnessed slap fights (virtually destroying their families and the health of the kids in the process), these two douchebags were also fixing cases for a mob boss who also had them in his pocket.

I hope the families take these two cocksuckers to the fucking cleaners in the civil suit phase. I hate judges on general principle alone but when I read of them blatantly abusing their power and positions at the expense of children and families, I hate 'em even twice as much.

Monday, February 23, 2009

Twenty Bucks, Same as in Town

Blogwhoring. You do it, I do it, we all do it. What have you been up to? Minstrel Boy from his new home at the GNB put up an interesting but disturbing post last Friday about the alleged bones of Geronimo being used by white Ivy League assholes like Prescott and George W. Bush as mere props in their Skull and Bones rituals. The descendants of Geronimo are suing for the return of the bones whether or not they belong to the famed Apache guerilla fighter. Here's Stevie's solution to the problem:

If it is the skull of that great freedom fighter (yes, one man's freedom fighter is another man's renegade terrorist) I would suggest the Henry II solution. After he incited the murder of St. Thomas A'Beckett the Pope gave him a penance. He walked barefoot from London to Canterbury, wearing a sackcloth and a noose around his neck. He was to beg the forgiveness of every priest he met along the way. He was also given 20 "symbolic" lashes by the new Archbishop of Canterbury.

Walking from New Haven to New Mexico barefoot, begging the pardon of every Native American they meet along the way would be a great way to test the commitment of these Ivy League assholes.

(T)he response to Obama's housing plan. There seem to be a whole lot of people who think that it's mainly designed to help out people who knowingly got themselves into trouble by living beyond their means, while those of us who were financially responsible are left out in the cold. (There's a decent sample of these reactions here. Sample: "Obama has one word for those who didn't get in over their heads during the recent housing boom and have paid their mortgages on time: Suckers!")

I just don't get this. Obama's plan is not primarily aimed at people who acted irresponsibly.

Obama's plan is neither a stopgap nor a panacea for all our housing ills but from what I've read of it, it's an extremely cost-effective first strike to curb two runaway problems: Foreclosure and plummeting property values that neighborhood foreclosures obviously bring about. Hilzoy explains this in plain English to help along those who have neither the time nor the aptitude to understand President Obama's housing plan.Speaking of the President, I have a question: How come we're not screaming our heads off about the proposed 30,000 troop surge about to go to Afghanistan like we were screaming about Bush's 20,000 (later revealed to be 31,500) surge in Iraq a couple of years ago?

Need a reason to scream? Here's one, courtesy of Jeff Huber in the pages of at-Largely:

As foreign policy analyst Gareth Porter tells us, Obama was ready to support the full 30,000 troop escalation, endorsed by Joint Chiefs chairman Adm. Mike Mullen and Central Command head Gen. David Petraeus. A hunch must have told Obama to ask one more question, because he called McKiernan directly and asked him how he planned to use those additional 30,000 troops. McKiernan couldn’t give him a straight answer.

Obama’s hunch must have generated in a Jan. 28 meeting with the Joint Chiefs and Defense Secretary Robert Gates. According to NBC Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski, Obama asked his service chiefs “What is the end game” in Afghanistan? His service chiefs replied, “Frankly, we don’t have one.”

In a related story, journalist Robert Dreyfuss reports that Danielle Pietka, vice president of the American Enterprise Institute, worries that Afghanistan is a "war that we may walk away from.”

OK, first of all, why the fuck is Obama listening to a closeted warhawk and perennially wrong and number-massaging son of a bitch like Petraeus?

Secondly, why commit tens of thousands of more troops to yet another quagmire from which we may have to walk away, a nation that's suddenly, with the success of the first Glorious Surge, become more fatal to US troops than even Iraq?

Thirdly, how is the Pentagon not having an endgame scenario that's cognizant of any political objectives an incentive for sending even the original 17,000 troops after going on 8 years?

Fourthly, how completely fucked up is Bush's forgotten war that there's still a Taliban with which to negotiate?

Iraq has been called our generation's Vietnam countless times but what about Afghanistan? Well, one thing, at least, could be said about the ultimately failed Vietnam war: At least it had a political objective in stopping the spread of Communism in SE Asia. Afghanistan hasn't even that one dimensional, paper-based, desk-bound objective.The Rude Pundit, as always, finds the incongruous, the sand in the Vaseline, the monkey in the wench, and so forth. He doesn't often post pictures but the Rude One has a couple of priceless ones that really are at odds with eachother: The down-to-earth former Preznit walking into a hardware store asking for a job and the reality of how down-to-earth he really is in his own neighborhood.

Btw, no takers, yet, for his preznidenshull mem-mwors, so I'm not feeling too bad about not yet getting an agent for my novel.Since I'm about as interested in the Oscars as I am in Karl Rove's toe jam, I generally pass an apathetic eye the next day over the news to see which movies and actors won the major awards. Better than the news is Canuck Firestarter 5 who summed up the evening more perfectly than even two-time winner Sean Penn's, "Commie homo-loving sons of guns":

Imagine how pissed off the right-wing knuckledraggers will be today. After last nights Academy Awards, their hatred of Hollywood will be that much more refined. The top 3 awards go to a female actress who portrayed a guard at the Auschwitz Holocaust camp, an actor who played a role as California's first openly gay elected official, and a film with a cast of brown skinned people who don't talk like they do.

As a final kick in the teeth, the Best Supporting Actor role went to a guy who died after a drug overdose and never even seen the completed film he starred in. It's as if last nights script was written especially for them!

Yep, the Limbaughs and Hannitys and O'Reillys will be on fire today.

If you put your ear to your right speaker, you can actually hear a distant sound that's reminiscent of Jiffy Pop. That's the adorable sound of pinheads exploding en masse.Rounding out the list is this amazing story on DKos about coldhearted corporate cocksuckery at its finest, one that makes me reconsider whether there's any validity to the rumors of Ray Kroc's devil worship.

Imagine being a minimum wage-earning schlep at McDick's who sees a thug slapping a woman around, running to her aid, throwing out the thug then getting shot multiple times when the prick returned?

Think that qualifies as a bad day at the office? It gets worse for the poor Good Samaritan: Since the shooting last summer, and after racking up over $300,000 in medical bills over the course of three abdominal surgeries, imagine McDonald's and their insurance carrier then denying your worker's compensation claim on the dodgy legal argument that you didn't incur your injuries within the parameters of your job description. Such devotion to both their customers and employees!

Yeah, I can understand how they'd need to pinch pennies in these tough times, considering that those artery-clogging pieces of shit saw profits rise by 80% last year, which was $4.3 billion.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Stop Me if This Sounds Familiar

Imagine a financial giant with hundreds of millions of dollars in assets. Their job is to extend loans to those in need during the most trying of times. Yet they choose to hoard almost twice as much as they loan out, deying loans even to those who kick in toward their bottom line.

Sounds like a bailed out bank, doesn't it?

Now imagine this same entity leaning on the poorer economic strata, basically browbeating them for what amounts to protection money, using enforcers to essentially extort this money and giving out petty privileges in return and sending out other enforcers to chase down those who don't repay their loans?

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Caption Contest

I still say this is the evilest-looking motherfucker in the galaxy. And out of a bumper crop of photographs taken during one of his latest public appearances, I think this one of Benedict XVI is the one most worthy of a snarky caption. So, are ya feelin' lucky today, sinners?

Happy April Fool's Day

Now, I'd like to take just a moment to ask for a little consensus. Since I'm single and unmarried, my additional tax credit will be only $400 while married people will get $800. That will translate to about $13 extra dollars in my paycheck. By next year, that'll get cut almost in half and we'll be back to where we started.

Question: How is this tax cut supposed to be efficacious in any meaningful way? It seems supportable on a macroscopic level, since that money, obviously, will be trickled into the economy piecemeal by each family.

But on a family level, how is this $13 extra a week that we'll be seeing in our paychecks going to significantly contribute to our personal financial salvation?

$13 will buy you maybe half a tank of gas or two packs of cigarettes. The difference will not be nearly big enough to allow me to get health insurance, which at my job is a joke, and Mass Health's premiums aren't much better. Myself, I'd rather get that $676 extra a year bundled in with my tax return next year. At my current tax table, that will get me $1100 instead of the $400+ that I'll be getting next month.

It's unreasonable to think that the average American taxpayer, in order to maximize the impact of this extra money, will put that extra $13 in the bank. And, of course, that was never the President's and Congress' intention. They want that money to be put back in the economy since people in my economic strata are what one person called "raging economic engines."

So in a macroscopic way, it makes sense to do it this way but I don't see how it benefits the average family. As much as I was opposed to it at the time in principle, I have to admit that George W. Bush's $600 stimulus check last spring did my family and I a helluva lot more good than the $676 dollars that Obama and Congress will be giving us by dribs and drabs. Plus, let's not forget, while the consumer price index will go up by at least its normal 3-4% (and the economy worsening the way it is, it could easily be higher than that), next year's tax break will shrink down to $7.70 per week.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Just to Let You All Know What We're Up Against

Believe it or not, when I crossposted last night's post on Democratic Underground, people had the nerve to say I was lying or exaggerating about what Hal Turner's threatening to do. He's hiding behind the First Amendment so he can subvert the Fourth Amendment rights of almost 250 lawmakers so someone can go out and shoot them so he can then do the Pontius Pilate thing and wash his hands of the whole affair and say, "But I was only joking!"

I've studiously avoided mentioning Turner's name on this blog because, frankly, I was legitimately afraid for my family, particularly for a certain young member. I was understandably fearing for a family that was never mine and never will be but that I nonetheless love more than words can express.

All that came to a crashing end tonight and I won't be living here much longer. That means, in all likelihood, I won't be blogging much longer. But taking down this fat freak Hal Turner would a helluva way for me to go out, doncha all think?

So if Hal's narcissism is running true to form and he takes a break from collecting all the addresses and phone numbers of those 246 Congressmen to see who's been writing about him, then he's sure to read this.

Hal, it never ceases to amaze me at how cruel life can be. While I'll be sleeping alone soon, you'll be sleeping next to a wife. While you live in a paid-for home, free of foreclosure worries, I'll be living in a rooming house considering I can get even that with my meager income.

Soon I'll be untraceable, invisible and more pissed off than even my gift for words can possibly express. So will that make me less dangerous or more?

Your hateful post is reproduced in full and no matter whether you take it down (as so many things disappear in Hal Turner World do) or revise it to make it less inflammatory (as also happens in your twisted world), the above screengrabs are forever, to be reproduced by whomever to their heart's content.

In the time remaining to me here in the only home I've ever had in 15+ years, I will make it my business to hound you out of existence in every way imaginable. I'm losing the only woman I've ever truly loved, my home and my family and I'm not very happy about it.

My rage is unfocused but I will focus it on you. I and others have already written to many of the 246 Congresspeople whom you've targeted. I have written to the FBI. I have written to the Transportation Security Administration. I have written the Capitol Police. Soon I will write to the North Bergen Police Department, the New Jersey field office of the Secret Service, Gov. Corzine's office, the Hudson County DA's office, both your senator's offices and whatever New Jersey media I can get to listen to me.

That should sufficiently do more than irritate you, what d'ya think, Harry?

So go ahead, send your phantom neonazis. By the time they get off their asses, I'll be gone. Or, if you really are as advertised, when they get here they'll meet a former SEAL with no reason to live and many reasons to die. All I ever tried to do is the right thing by my family and loved ones, side with the angels and my reward is homelessness and rejection.

I never went on my blog and told people to kill elected officials simply because they didn't vote my way. I only suggested we vote them out. I never literally sold my own followers up the river and to the FBI for following my initiatives and tried to pretend to be a good guy the whole time.

And I don't take a dime of the government's money for protecting said government by then going back and threatening it while cowering behind a ghost army of skinheads and bleating about first amendment rights.

You're going to be sleeping with your wife tonight. I'll be sleeping alone. You'll be doing it in a paid-off house while I'll be homeless soon.

I've long since given up any hope that there's a compassionate God in this universe. You're proof positive that there's not.

And you'll be screaming for Him to end your worthless, hateful, wasted, pathetic excuse for a life long before I'm done with you and we'll see if Sean Hannity comes running to your rescue.

Update: I've just emailed the Hudson County DA's Office (their email addy is hcpo@hcpo.org) alerting them as to what Turner's been threatening to do. I don't know if this is a county DA matter or a federal one that has to be investigated by Holder's Justice Dept. but I'm reaching people bit by bit.

New Crooks and Liars Site

If John Amato's site gets any bigger, the next sporting venue that opens up in Pennsylvania may be named Crooks and Liars.com Stadium.

At roughly the same time that Time Magazine named Crooks and Liars one of the top 25 blogs in the world, C&L spun off a new site. What's truly remarkable is that, among the top 25, Amato's site that now features commentary by bluegal, d r i f t g l a s s and David Neiwert among others, is one of the very few devoted to politics (Such as the incredibly overrated HuffPo, #1 TPM, Sullivan's Daily Dish and Paul Krugman's Conscience of a Liberal. Daily Kos made their list, too, except as one of the most overrated blogs. Ouch.).

The new site. Right, right. Well, it's called Newstalgia and it's dedicated to current events as told through historical events and figures. Think of the vintage "newspaper" front pages of The Onion only without the dry humor and ample chuckles.

Unlike Amato's original site, this place is just getting off the ground and hardly gets any comments (and anyone who gets less comments than I do is in serious need of help.). So go on over to Newstalgia and decide for yourself whether you like it. Myself, I liked the post devoted to Father Coughlin and the origins of right wing hate radio considering a recent but far from resolved runin that I'd had recently with another practitioner of right wing hate radio.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

I Have a Favor to Ask

As I'm sure at least some of you know by now, America's most unsung patriot has threatened to send like-minded patriots to my home.

Virtually all of us can afford to laugh at him for sitting in his nowhere land making all his nowhere plans for nobody. All, that is, except me. And Judge Lefkow, whose husband and mother were slaughtered several years ago after the aforementioned "internet patriot" published the judge's personal info while calling for her death.

Although 99% of his threats come to nothing, we all know that all it takes is one committed individual to make a tragic difference in someone's life. Or, potentially, millions. Judge Lefkow can tell you all about that. So can the Kennedy family.

Now he's threatening to do it again, only on a much grander scale: He's endangering the lives of all 246 Congressmen who voted Aye on the stimulus bill by posting their personal contact info.

Whether or not the assassin who killed Lefkow's husband and mother was directly tied to our unsung patriot, we can't afford to take chances. I'm not trying to be a hero here. But we would be remiss in our responsibilities as Americans if we choose not to get involved and to, instead, sit back and watch the news waiting for something to happen.

Considering that we're talking about 246 email addresses, I'm afraid that if I have to hunt down every one of them, a mass email sent to all these lawmakers may not get sent to them in time to stop their personal information from getting disseminated. It's not just these representatives' lives that are being recklessly endangered but also that of their families.

Hopefully, despite their legislative workload, more than a few of these Congressmen will contact the pertinent authorities. I'm just sorry that I didn't think of this earlier. I hope we're not too late. You know who is smart enough to not post such info on his blog thereby violating the TOS and will post this personal info on a news group.

Remember: All it takes if one committed individual, people. Please help me look up these email addresses, phone and fax numbers, whatever we can get to warn them. The more people who send me email addresses & etc., the fewer I have to look up and the sooner we can warn them. I will start with the top of the list of congressmen who voted aye on the stimulus bill (on the thomasloc.gov website linked to above.). I'd appreciate it if you all who can generously give of your time and energy would start on the bottom so I don't waste time looking up public info I don't have to.

In the meantime, I'll also be looking up phone numbers and email addresses within New Jersey so I can help get this animal picked up.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Barack Obama and the Age of Post-Bipartisanship.

I never thought the Obama administration was the age of Aquarius but we're certainly living in the age of post-bipartisanship.

As far back as when he was just an exotic, appealing but still unlikely presidential nominee, President Barack Obama has called for transformative change through consensus, specifically bipartisan consensus. That immediately distinguished Mr. Obama from the previous administration, in which calamitous decisions appear to have been unilaterally made by someone who on several occasions wistfully wished that he was a dictator.

Indeed, the president's bewilderingly civil conduct toward congressional Republicans and even right wing pundits outside the sphere of policy-making would, in a non-Bizarro World, make preposterous any claims of Democratic partisanship on the part of the Obama administration.

Yet me live in Bizarro World. Hoarsely screamed accusations by House Minority Leader John Boehner of being locked out of the process is exactly what we're hearing.

Strenuously and vigorously forgotten is Obama having GOP lawmakers at the WH for drinks during his "charm offensive." Forgotten is the fact that the president honored his campaign promise to install and retain Republicans in his Cabinet. Forgotten is Mr. Obama retaining for the time being a moderate Republican such as Dr. Robert F. Gates as Defense Secretary. Forgotten is John Boehner telling his counterparts in the Senate to ignore Obama even before the president had a chance to speak with them.

Still fresh in peoples' minds is Judd Gregg, the second man tapped by Obama to be Commerce Secretary. Not enough hay is being made of two key facts:

1) Obama's admirably bipartisan but inexplicably clueless nomination of any Republican to head up what will almost surely become, in these economic Dark Ages, a more front and center and important department.

2) Likewise has it been glossed over that Gregg a) thought nothing at all of embarrassing an administration that had already had one olive branch after another torched by Gregg's party because b) Gregg could not relax his ideological rigidity and would rather go back to being an obscure, second-tier senator instead of taking a powerful cabinet post in the new administration, ergo c) leaving said suddenly more important cabinet position vacant even longer.

Gregg might as well have borrwoed John Ashcroft's Guy Hovis wig and belted out "I've Gotta Be Me."

As Frank Rich said the day before yesterday in "They Sure Showed That Obama", the vultures of the MSM had already begun circling over Obama's head no sooner than he'd taken his hand off Abe Lincoln's Bible. Despite the glaringly obvious second consecutive decimation in the ranks of the Congressional GOP, pundits politically left and right were already setting the Obama Political Death Watch on T minus four years and counting. Editorial offices in the NY Times and Washington Post were probably setting up pools trying to predict which would be Obama's fatal misstep: Would it be Gitmo? The stimulus bill?

That right wing worthy Peggy Noonan, in "Obama's Stimulus Stumble", as the title suggests, somehow portrayed the stimulus bill as both Obama's albatross and a phoenix for the GOP rising from their ashheap of history.

Unfortunately, this view isn't restricted to conservative columnists.

Yet one has to ask where this healthily skeptical media were when Bush detoured us from the war on terror to invade Iraq. Where was it when Bush decided to give out tax cuts to his wealthy base of Haves and Have Mores, starting a downward recessional spiral that could last, from nose to tail, a decade?

Where were the media when 9/11 happened on Bush's watch, after it was known that he'd blown off the now-infamous PDB of 8/6/01 entitled, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike US" and how come the press wasn't more openly skeptical of him walking into that school on 9/11, knowing the first plane hit the tower, and then sitting there for seven minutes straight in stupefaction after Andy Card told him about the second plane?

And how come we all gave him an approval rating of 90% after the most catastrophic presidential failure ever?

The Republicans are like children who have been playing outside for hours. They whine and piss and moan when the grownups call them in to wash up for dinner. They're used to not being bossed around by the grownups. Yet instead of being firm with these children, the Democrats are coddling these people even as they kick them in the shin, even to the point of giving one of the juvenile friends an important chore in the house like paying the bills. Then the kid appointed for this very important, grownup job leaves before he does anything because he doesn't like the idea of his friend's parents telling him how to do it.

This is the Age of Post Bipartisanship. Maybe, as Frank Rich says, Obama can just check off the box next to it and move on. But sooner or later, we all have to because the GOP is dead and bloated.

The Secret Life of Walter Shitty

(Photoshopped pic courtesy of Alicia Morgan of Hootersville.)

Blogger. Pundit. Television and radio personality. Agent provocateur. Patriot. He's a right wing Renaissance man, the unthinking man's Walter Mitty. He's Hal Turner, a failed Rush Limbaugh wannabe who couldn't even with his readership keep on the air a short wave internet radio show done from his home in North Bergen, NJ. About the only thing this mentally diseased bipedaled pachyderm has in common with el Rushbo is an infallible aptitude for gaining weight.

However much it may be an accurate indictment of the stupidity of 27% of our nation, Limbaugh nonetheless enjoys Arbitron ratings even higher than him during his Oxycontin addiction, huge paychecks and you'd be hard-pressed to find any Republican on Capitol Hill who wouldn't break his neck in the middle of a Committee meeting or even a vote to take his call. As morally and mentally putrified as he is, ya still gotta give the man his due: He still rates and rates high with the GOP and will continue to do so for years to come.

Hal Turner is the hard, bitter kernel of antebellum racism and intolerance who appeals only to the hard, bitter kernel of what's left of his anachronistic ilk. He's a walrus-sized pleco, sucking on the glass of his invisible cage and, until yesterday, subsisting on the intellectual algae of the tiniest fraction of this 27%, a human only by some generous anthropological definition.

Surely, the First Amendment doesn't apply to this cancer of human thought.

Yet, it's men like James Moore, who merely co-wrote Bush's Brain, a book critical of Bush and Karl Rove, one that contains not a single death threat against either man or any member of Congress, who is on a terrorist watch list that prevents him from flying the friendly skies.

While countless tens of thousands of innocent, law-abiding citizens got capriciously and senselessly vacuumed up wholesale between 2001-2009 into this list partly through federal air marshals pressured to make quota, while people are arrested and charged with terrorism simply for aiming a laser pointer at a jet...

...Hal Turner, a morally and mentally palsied maggot who's threatened presidents and members of Congress and who'd published instructions for making ricin and bombs, has somehow escaped the transportation officials of our paranoid, hypervigilant, racial profiling post-9/11 nation.

And this happened... how?

Wasn't the USA PATRIOT Act and Jane Harmon's HR 1955 supposed to, in theory, protect us from homegrown terrorists just like Turner?

Here's a link to contact information for Homeland Security. While you're at it, here's another for a Secret Service field office in your locality (including Hal's). Regarding the TSA (now the Transportation Security and not Safety Administration), this is their contact information for security concerns: Phone: 1-866-289-9673 E-mail: TSA-ContactCenter@dhs.gov.

I say we make the system work for us for a change instead of against us. So let's report this fat fuck before he finally does grow a set because, frankly, his last post gave me the willies.

Monday, February 16, 2009

Don't Let the Door Hit Your Fat Ass on the Way Out

I can't take all the credit, although a shameless, obnoxious attention-seeking blog whore like me easily could. The credit goes to you, people, for reporting Hal's "cesspool of a blog" that's sadly, folding its anti-Arabian tents. Hal, after chewing his keyboard for a bit, eventually proved the validity of the million monkeys/million keyboards theory by producing this long-awaited screed:

I have decided to cease publishing my views, hopes, observations and dreams on issues social, cultural and political. There's much real work to be done - including the use of brutal force and violence - and this endeavor is a waste of time.

Internet Patriots are a lot like Voyeurs; they watch but can't or won't do anything in real life. There's no time left for such useless people or hoping they will grow a pair.

As I undertake the acts that must be done, the rest of you can sit back and watch; after all, that's the only thing you're good for.

Shorter Hal:

If you wanna kill and have it done right, ya gotta do it yourself. You people suck. I thought I could count on you. Gotta go, now, losers. I have white powder to stuff into envelopes and Achoo! Oh shitshitshit!!!!

Hal's also not taking comments, anymore, thereby cruelly stifling the vast hordes of his followers who nonetheless, after nearly a year, weren't able to scrape together enough cash on Hal's Paypal account to get back on the air his shortwave, internet-based radio show that was done out of his mud room.

Well, they may be voyeurs and were vicariously living out their wet dreams of blood-tinged anarchy through Hal. Obviously, being a right wing voyeur can have a downside if you wait for Hal to get off his well-padded ass to actually do something.

Then again, there's an ominous tone to the end of Hal's screed so I think we ought to redouble our efforts to contact state and federal authorities before we have to see newscasts of ATF agents carrying plastic bags of shit out of Turner's fully paid house in North Bergen.

Also, the Internet is full of Calaises and Casablancas ready to receive scofflaws, ass pirates and general, run of the mill scumbags like Turner. Don't think just because Turner's packing it in here at Blogspot that he'll remain silent for long. Think: Waddle silent, waddle deep. Don't let the fat bastard slither into the tall grass so we forget about him.

In the meantime, take a bow, Pottersvillians. I couldn't have done this by myself. With you all getting my back, we made the Internet a less cruel, stupid and stench-ridden place and all under 48 hours.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

We're Not Bigots. We're Patriots

That's the argument the Nazis used even as they were rounding up and murdering gays, the mentally challenged and Jews. Look how well that agenda worked out.

There are, in my experience, two types of Republicans: There are those who bristle at the thought of being compared to the Nazis. Then there are those to whom a comparison to Nazis is redundant because they've already embraced a defunct political party that no longer controls any country on earth and, by rights, should've been hounded out of existence along with Heritage Foundation think tankers and Barry Manilow fans.

In other words, being associated with the most ruinous movement since St. Peter founded the Roman Catholic Church is actually a badge of honor and the badge is a swastika.

Hal Turner, a waddling brain stem from Jersey who makes Tony Soprano look respectable by comparison, is a case in point. Turner, for reasons that remain inexplicable and disturbing beyond contemplation, continues exhorting others to kill both the President and almost 250 members of Congress, as well as George W. Bush and doing so with a very suspicious impunity.

Thanks to reader and fellow blogger William N. Grigg, who'd written a wonderful post last year that partly referenced it, Turner's association with the FBI is brought to light and they were/are using him as an informant to help capture (and I swear, folks, even I can't make this shit up) a man who was making death threats against Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI).

Anyone with half a brain and even a modicum of a news IQ can recall what happens when the federal government uses informants. Bukko in Australia mentioned something near my neck of the woods regarding the Boston field office of the FBI and turning their back on mob hits because they were being carried out by one of their informants who promised to lead them to the Promised Land, specifically the land on which Whitey Bulger resides to this day in total freedom. And, on a higher plane... Chalabi and Curveball, anyone?

And it's hard to believe that the FBI is so naive and gullible that they can be fooled into thinking that Hal Turner, of all people, a testicle of a man who makes Joe the Plumber look like a responsible, balanced journalist, is really one of the good guys. Turner's long record of brutal intolerance against gays, minorities, liberals, Democrats and others who don't buy into his razor-narrow world view is well, well documented.

Besides, how is it even legal, much less legitimately efficacious, to "pretend" to call for the assassination of our new President? The above screengrab, courtesy of The General, came from Turner's last site before he hurriedly pulled it down. The caption below it was what led the Secret Service to contact the General in regards a post he'd written almost a year ago about this very same threat.

Turner, at the time, was giving instructions on his site on how to make ricin. He's also posted instructions in how to make bombs.

Some people on AmericaBlog have told me that it may come down to someone getting harmed or worse and the federal authorities needing to tie it to Turner's writings before anything can be done about this lunatic. As I'd written this morning to Agent Haug of the FBI, I really shudder to think that, especially in this post-9/11 environment, long established patterns of dangerous behavior isn't actionable enough.

You want to talk about efficacy? Before Judge Lefkow's husband and mother were slain, Turner had not only openly called for her murder (and over a case in which she ruled the Pledge of Allegiance was unconstitutional) but even published her personal information.

Oh, but we're the good guys, doncha know, just some good ole white boys intent on preserving a culture that has subjugated, tortured, raped, pillaged and slaughtered more people than any other race in the history of our planet.

I just pretend to try to bully our elected officials into not voting on things that don't jibe with my lunatic fringe splinter minority.

Well, Hal, here are my thoughts: Your claims of being the good guy are beneath laughter. We all know what you are and what you stand for. You're a David Koresh wannabe who hasn't the balls to even hold a rifle much less stockpile them. Soon, the FBI will tire of you and turn on you. The Secret Service will be back and they won't leave empty-handed.

You can't bully me. I'm a former SEAL who's killed more people than you've ever loved and, at my age, there isn't a helluva lot left for me to fear. You are a pathetic foot soldier in a losing war in which the other side is getting darker and more multiethnic. If you don't believe me, look who's living in the White House.

Finally, I give you this closing image to let you know that you have the crushing weight of history against you.

Dear Agent Haug of the FBI:

Agent Haug:

I don't know at this writing if you're still with the FBI or at any field office in New Jersey nor even whether you still head up the Bureau's Joint Terrorism Task Force at that field office. If so, then you'll want to hear this.

I know for a fact that, with hideous irony, Hal Turner used to be an informant for the FBI and that you were his handler. I say "hideous irony" because, as I hope you know, Turner has acquired some small reputation as a fringe looney advocating "patriotic assassination" against government officials and inciting open rebellion against the very same federal government for whom you work.

The very notion of Turner pretending to flush out these dangerous lunatics with his hateful, racist rhetoric is beneath laughter. What I find much more disturbing is that the FBI actually and actively seeks out this bloated clown's guidance in flushing out potential terrorists/assassins.

Considering his hatred of anything that smells of liberality and common sense, do you honestly believe that Turner gives a shit if someone offs Senator Russ Feingold, next to Ted Kennedy the most liberal and progressive member of the US Senate?

Apparently, Turner was "working" with the FBI as recently as 2007 (I pulled your FBI email address off a site in my research on Turner's connection to you and the Bureau). I'm not getting any indication that such a relationship still exists or whether or not he's fallen into bad odor with the Bureau but since Hal and I had become, uh, acquainted yesterday when he trolled my blog I've decided to start paying some more attention to him.

Some time last year, Turner had started a blog on Blogger.com and is apparently up to his old tricks. At least every other day, he advocates assassinating not just one public official or another but all 246 congressmen and congresswomen who had voted for the recent Recovery or Stimulus bill.

Now, my pal Hal assures me that he's staying within the parameters of the law in his rhetoric and legal minds have given me the gloomy news that someone has to be wounded or killed and have it directly tied to Turner before anyone can even bring conspiracy charges against him.

Turner himself had even given me the number to the FBI field office in New Jersey and dared me to call and to see what happens. I've, obviously, decided to get a little more personal.

Now, I've heard and read accounts where people were arrested and even brought up on charges of threatening the President even when the "evidence" was specious and circumstantial at best. Obviously, the FBI and Secret Service should not, nor do not, have to wait before something tragic happens to the Chief Executive before taking action.

It's a no-brainer that if Turner had substituted "congressmen" for "Obama", it would be a crime yet I do not nor cannot believe that making overt threats against a democratically-elected official beneath the President is not actionable.

Turner is not trying to flush out crazies and to get them arrested. His track record as a white supremacist makes that absurd. And, we both have to ask ourselves, Agent Haug, as to what the fallout would be for you personally, and the FBI collectively, if this violent racist's initiatives were to translate into violence and/or tragedy, especially after if becomes public knowledge that the FBI actually used him as a resource.

Turner's blog URL, if you don't know, is http://halturnershow.blogspot.com/ (God only knows why he's naming it after a defunct radio show that he hasn't made in well over four years). It would be very well worth your time to see what he's still advocating these days and the odious element that he's attracting.

Your response ought to be interesting, to say the least. Note, also, that this email is getting CC'd directly to Turner's secret12 address @ optonline.net. Just so it's all on the up and up and he can't claim that I've blindsided him.